


salt

by hellblazeit



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 42, caleb sacrificing himself for his friends is my favorite food, i'm fond of lovecraftian horror and am terrified by the latest cliffhanger that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 04:49:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16674814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellblazeit/pseuds/hellblazeit
Summary: Danger. Do something.The phosphorus is silty soft in the palm of his hand, and as eyes glinting with arcane awareness land directly on him, his fingers are already smearing through it.-A Wall of Fire.





	salt

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 42
> 
> hammered this out in an hour, i haven't re-read it and don't really plan to. i'm terrified for the gang and stressed that we won't know what happens for TWO WEEKS.

He knows the arcane symbols the moment he sees them. He knows that spell. He knows what it means.

_Danger,_ his mind supplies helpfully. _Complication. Wrinkle in the plan. Obstacle. Remove it._

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Beau leaning forward, muscles tensed, poised to spring. Nott, reaching towards her belt — for her flask, ostensibly, but he sees her fingers stray past to her crossbow. He chances a glance to Fjord and sees him still and stolid, unmoved by the show of investigation with his arms folded and brow arched in idle curiosity. Try as he might, he can’t tell if it’s an act or not. It has to be. In a matter of seconds, they'll be pegged for thieves and liars and Avantika will kill them where they stand.

_Danger. do something._

The phosphorus is silty soft in the palm of his hand, and as eyes glinting with arcane awareness land directly on him, his fingers are already smearing through it.

Fire tears across the deck with a roar, bisecting the boat and drawing all eyes to him. The heat on his face is the stare of the sun. Crew members leap back from the blaze, yells of rage and terror echo through the space between them, there’s the sound of weapons being drawn from scabbards and the muttering of spells being prepared. Beside him he hears Nott shriek and a voice shouting his name and Fjord calling a warning, but in all the chaos, Caleb’s eyes find Avantika.

She stands just as still as Fjord had, hand on her sword but moving no closer towards action. Embers catch on strands of her fiery hair, catch and light and trail slow burning curls of light around her face but she doesn’t bat them out. Her eyes are locked on his, and he knows the look in them the way he'd known it in Trent Ikithon’s. In Lorenzo’s. Fury at being crossed, at being disobeyed. That alone, they could maybe handle, that alone would only frighten him, but he knows something else in those eyes too: madness. Mangled, seething glee at this act of rebellion, depraved delight that crackles with as hateful a light as the flame, and the fear that twists in Caleb like a jagged glaive is like nothing he's ever felt.

He sees something else, too: that her eyes are awash with glinting yellow.

Her incurious smile is the last thing he registers before there’s a blur of motion and something slams him to the ground.

There’s a _crack_ as his head meets the deck and everything goes dark for a second, coming back hazy and blurred. Searing pain spikes through his temple, too much to manage even a gasp at. His hands are already moving, the arcane sparks of blue protection magic blurring into pairs and triads in his barely-coherent vision, but something heavy pins one arm to the deck and the other is locked in a vice grip, squeezing painfully tight and grinding the bones in his wrist together, and Caleb blinks dazedly up at Fjord through a haze of throbbing skull and pulsing adrenaline. The two-toned face is grim, teeth bared in threat, and if those tusks were just a little more grown out, it might be truly horrifying to be so close to. He tries to wrest his hand free from the knee digging into his forearm but Fjord presses down harder, keeping him trapped. Tingling numbness is beginning to spread across his fingers and Caleb tries one last time to wriggle free, jerking a knee up at what soft underbelly he could reach only for it to thud against leather armor and do nothing. He's a survivor, he always has been, but Fjord has his wrist in a crushing grip, and Caleb feels cold seawater slide down his throat as the falchion materializes in the other hand, blade pressed up against his throat.

Jester is screaming something in the distance but her voice is thin and reedy and very far away, incomprehensible behind the wall of utter calm that has begun to block out the world in Caleb’s head.

It was always going to end this way.

He’d figured that out the first time salt and steel was bared against him, in the High Richter’s house. There was respect, then, in knowing that Fjord would not hesitate to stand on his morals. This isn't exactly the same: this is desire for power, playing a game in order to win it. Fjord’s choices will lead him — possibly the world — to ruin, that far ahead he can see, but they are his choices to make. Caleb’s own choices champ and stamp somewhere deep in the back in his mind, regrets upon regrets screaming to be heard, thoughts of his _mission_ clawing at the barricade, but all that he can comprehend is a wall of silence and the eyes of his friend above him, and he gives that same respect now, stops fighting back and stares calm into golden eyes that have come to belong to his executioner.

There’s a rustle from his side. He looks down in time to see the faintest shimmer to the air as the notebook he’d spent so many hours decoding slides from his holster and across the deck. He sees a blue hand scoop it up and out of sight.

Then Fjord says “hold your breath” and drags him to the side, and even as Avantika calls “wait!” and Nott screams out “ _Caleb!_ ” Caleb’s world becomes a swirl of sea and sky.

The water is icy cold when he hits it and it nearly knocks the hastily gasped air from his lungs. The weight of his clothes bear him down, his ragged coat that has always been too light and too thin on cold nights in the past suddenly a ballast that drags him towards the floor of the harbor, and he struggles towards the surface with frantically paddling arms, stirring the silt with his kicks. He’s never been the strongest of men, and that’s clearer now than ever, reaching towards the glittering of sunlight on the surface and making little headway. He has to reach them. Has to see what's going on. Has to —

_Get shot the second your head reappears?_ The voice in his head is sarcastic and biting. _You’re exhausting yourself for nothing. Stop. Think._

He slows his efforts and lets himself float in place, gives his muscles time to relax. The salt stings his eyes and nose, presents an almost mind-numbing agony in the wound where his head had collided with hard wood, and Caleb watches small trickles of red climb to the surface the way he can’t. He'll have to fix that. Sharks can smell blood, he'd read.

There will be air beneath the pier itself, a place to surface out of the eyes of the _Squall-Eater_ ’s crew. Just a few kicks away, he can make it. Continue to wait beneath the water until the others come for him, or until it’s clear that they will never come for him.

Caleb pushes for it, kicks and claws until he can drag himself upwards against the wooden pillars that hold the pier above water, and as his head breaks the surface he gulps in the air, hand over his mouth. It’s so much louder above water, shouts and panicked voices from the ship clear to his ears. He makes out Nott’s voice, Jester’s, the voice of the sailor who was stabbed during their failed caper, and then he takes another breath and ducks back beneath the water. He can’t take any chances being seen. As long as he stays below, perhaps they’ll think he’s drowned.

He’s so tired. His eyes ache from the previous night’s work, and the salt scalds them until he's squinting. Caleb closes them and occupies himself with planning, strategizing.

The wall of fire will have vanished by now, concentration broken by his impact. The others will have to explain themselves. Fjord’s attack had been clever, hopefully enough of a show of loyalty to give him some leeway with Avantika. Hopefully the others will be able to act just as well. He worries, briefly, for Nott, but the others will protect her. The others will keep her safe.

And if it’s not enough, if nothing else is enough, they have her book. They have leverage.

The others will be okay. And if Avantika thinks that he was the only traitor — fed whatever convincing lie Fjord can conjure up — then they can all regroup later. At the _Mistake_ , or maybe the market. They will survive this.

Something brushes against his leg and he lifts it absently, presumably out of the weeds that grow in the sand. He hadn’t realized he’d dipped so far down, but he hadn’t realized how tired he was, either.

It comes again. And then again.

Everything sounds strange underwater. He can hear the wind, for one, which is endlessly fascinating. A low, mournful sound, like far-off howling. Growing louder, and louder. And louder. It carries whispers with it, first dozens and then hundreds of voices: names, both familiar and strange, names that begin to churn together into warbling words.

**PROVOKE.**

The water is far colder than it had been before. Ice slithers down his spine. Something brushes against his leg again and again and then tangles around his ankles, yanking him away from the surface. Caleb kicks against it but the coils simply tighten, and he’s going down, down, impossibly down. Deeper than the harbor floor, until his ears pop with the pressure and his lungs are straining, and he keeps kicking, but the whispers grow louder and slowly he realizes that he can’t seem to move at all anymore.

The water. Her powers came from the water.

Gods, what fools they were.

**CONSUME.**

There’s a golden glow against his closed eyelids. Golden like Avantika's eyes. Like Fjord's.

Caleb opens his eyes.

The burn of salt water does nothing to obscure the monstrous visage of the creature before him.

A single yellow eye stares at him. Into him. Through him.

Bubbles begin to erupt from parted lips.

**PUNISH.**

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated!!


End file.
